Relationship with genital herpes carrier, how long before you get the disease?

For those who are in relationships with a genital herpes carrier: how long into the relationship that you finally got the disease, or are you still healthy by now? Are you male or female? What made you decide to be with this person despite of his/her medical condition? Any tips to minimize the risk?

minimize the risk by using protection, and abstain from sex if the person has an outbreak. I am the carrier of Herpes 2. I have only ever been with one guy and i am stil with him now. He didnt know taht he could give it to me, and he didnt even know he had it, but i got it from oral. So avoid oral with ur partner.

the risk is not how long until u get it, but rather IF u get it. You could be with this partner for all ur life and never get herpes, even having unsafe sex. then again you could be careful, have protected sex, and still get the virus. Its all a game of chance i guess. and at least ur partner was upfront and let u know. That is a big step.

as for the herpes, i have only ever had one outbreak and that was over a yr ago. I dont take meds for it, thats only if u have it and outbreak often. its a strange thing, the herpes. i oculd go for the rest of my life and never have a nother outbreak, or spread it (my partner doesnt have genital herpes) and tahts having unprotected sex. then again an outbreak could occur next week.

Use a condom, and have her or him take valtrex. Don’t have sex when a break out is occuring or when a break out may be close to occuring. Usually the person with HSV-2 has a tingling sensation in their leg or hip. Follow these rules, and you may not get it. Don’t shave your pubes either. That’s just eliminating one more barrier of protection. Most of the time they are contagious only during breakouts, but it’s never gauranteed.

You have to ask yourself how much you love this person, and how much they mean to you. Are they the one? If this is just a fling, then you may want to rethink your actions. I’ve lived with this disease for 8 years. It’s more of an annoyance for men than a real problem. I’ve had maybe 2 breakouts that lasted 3 days in the last 4 years. The real problem is the embarassment of having to tell a girlfriend what’s up. If this person confided in you, he or she must care for you a lot. Give it a chance. It’s not like it’s AIDS or Genital Warts, and I’m sorry to anyone that got offended by this comment. I’m not trying to intensify anyones anquish over their condition, but HSV-2 or Herpes is so common, the chances of you breaking up with this person and you dating someone else with it later on down the line are pretty high.

Females are at a higher risk of acquiring genital herpes from a male partner than males are from a female partner. Studies have found that among discordant heterosexual couples (one has HSV, one does not) with a source partner who had symptomatic recurrent genital HSV-2 infection, the ANNUAL transmission rates were 11-17% in couples with a male source partner and 3-4% in couples with a female source partner.

In one study, transmission in 70% of patients appeared to result from sexual contact during periods of asymptomatic (no symptom/outbreak) viral shedding….that is transmission occured when there was no outbreak.

The best way to minimize the risk of transmission:
-ABSOLUTELY no sex or intimate contact during an outbreak (that includes the instant that you start feeling the outbreak coming on…itching, burning, tingling, uneasy feeling until the outbreak completely heals over.

-At all other times, the use of condoms can reduce the risk of transmission of genital HSV-2 from infected men to women by 50% and may reduce the transmission from infected women to men to a similar degree. However, condom effectiveness is greatly limited by non-use and may also be limited because of the location of the lesions and the risk of transmission during oral sex.
-If the source partner has around 5 or 6 outbreaks a year (or even fewer, speak to your healthcare practitioner!) they may be a candidate for daily suppressive therapy. This therapy reduces recurrent lesions, reduces asymptomatic viral shedding, and therefore decreases the likelihood of transmission.

It is important to note that genital herpes infections increase the risk of acquiring HIV (should you come into contact wth it) two-fold.

Hope this helps! And please feel free to ask your healthcare practitioner about anything I have mentioned.

I caught genital herpes from my partner, but he didn’t have genital herpes himself, he just got occasional cold sores, which are caused by the oral herpes virus.

The oral herpes virus hsv-1 when it is on the mouth is actually slightly more infectious than genital hsv-2 – about 17-18% of the time. Unlike most people, we actually knew oral herpes can be passed to the genitals through oral sex – my boyfriend is a nurse and he made me aware of the risk. However, we both thought it could only be passed around the time he had a sore, so he scrupulously avoided any time he had symptoms. We had a relationship where he gave me oral sex regularly, but it took me 7 years to catch genital herpes.

I never judged him for having oral herpes – I liked him as he was, and oral herpes doesn’t carry a stigma, even though it is no different at all. I hope that people in the future will not stigmatise me for having the same virus genitally (where,just for the record, it is only infectious for a fifth of the time that it is orally – hsv-1 prefers to be on the mouth)

I think he was alwasy scrupulous about avoiding ANY symptoms – if he thought he had a tingle on the lip, or a split lip, or a small pimple or even soreness he avoided contact. When I did catch it we had had drunken sex, and he had a cold which I then caught, so both of our immune systems were low. If you have genital hepres, there are other times apart from when you have a visible sore when the virus may be infectious. I get soreness of the skin down my buttocks and thighs, sometimes a tingle, sometimes sore patches of skin or a ‘pimple’. If I have ANYTHING i think is suspicious, I avoid sex. If I am feeling tired or run down, I avoid sex. If I feel like I am getting a cold or ‘flu I DEFINITELY avoid contact, because this is the biggest trigger for me – there is a reason oral herpes is known as ‘cold sores’ and ‘fever blisters’ – when something else attacks your body it generally means herpes is likely to surface, even if it casues no visible symptoms.

As to the use of condoms… they only protect if they cover the area where there is an outbreak or where you could be shedding the virus form mucous membrane. In practice this means that condoms provide about 40% protection for a woman having sex with a man with genital herpes, but may provide as low as 0% proteciton, according to recent studies, for a man having sex with a woman with gential herpes. This is because most women have outbreaks on the labia or other areas not covered by a condom, and herpes is spread by skin to skin contact.

Well, The other person might never get the disease. The person that is the carrier has to be very careful and not to endure in sexual contact during an outbreak and let you know what is going on with her body at the time.. You can actually have a life with someone that has herpes. The disease is not deadly, you can’t die from it, it just hangs around like old luggage. Make sure that you really love that person and plan to be with them for a long period of time.

There are many couples out there with one person who has genital herpes and the other person doesn’t. There are ways to help prevent the spread of genital herpes. I was personally in a relationship for four years with a guy who didn’t have genital herpes and when we broke up he still didn’t have the virus. He never contracted it from me during those four years.

If a person has sex with another person who has genital herpes though, there is ALWAYS going to be a chance that the virus will spread, even if condoms are used. Condoms ONLY cover the penis and not the entire genital area. Herpes can be spread by DIRECT skin to skin contact. So, just the rubbing back and forth of the genital skin during sex or foreplay is enough to spread the virus.

Condoms HELP prevent the spread of the virus, antiviral medication HELPS, and not having sex or doing anything sexual while the person is on an outbreak can HELP prevent spreading the virus, but nothing is truly 100% effective except for abstinence.